Open Access Edition of A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American by Kathleen Cummings

FAIN: DR-280005-21

University of North Carolina Press, Inc. (Chapel Hill, NC 27515-2288)
Mark Simpson-Vos (Project Director: December 2020 to October 2022)

This project will publish the book A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American, written by NEH Fellow Kathleen Cummings (NEH grant number FA-55091-10), in an electronic open access format under a Creative Commons license, making it available for free download and distribution. The author will be paid a royalty of at least $500 upon release of the open access ebook.

Associated Products

Single Publication (Open Access eBook or Collection)
Publication Type: Single Publication
Title: A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American
Year: 2019
ISBN: 97814696494
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Author: Kathleen Sprows Cummings
Editor: Elaine Maisner
Abstract: What drove U.S. Catholics in their arduous quest, full of twists and turns over more than a century, to win an American saint? The absence of American names in the canon of the saints had left many of the faithful feeling spiritually unmoored. But while canonization may be fundamentally about holiness, it is never only about holiness, reveals Kathleen Sprows Cummings in this panoramic, passionate chronicle of American sanctity. Catholics had another reason for petitioning the Vatican to acknowledge an American holy hero. A home-grown saint would serve as a mediator between heaven and earth, yes, but also between Catholicism and American culture. Throughout much of U.S. history, the making of a saint was also about the ways in which the members of a minority religious group defined, defended, and celebrated their identities as Americans. Their fascinatingly diverse causes for canonization—from Kateri Tekakwitha and Elizabeth Ann Seton to many others that are failed, forgotten, or still under way—represented evolving national values as Catholics made themselves at home. Cummings’s vision of American sanctity shows just how much Catholics had at stake in cultivating devotion to men and women perched at the nexus of holiness and American history—until they finally felt little need to prove that they belonged.
Primary URL: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469665535/a-saint-of-our-own/
Primary URL Description: UNC Press
Secondary URL: https://www.amazon.com/Saint-Our-Own-Catholics-American-ebook/dp/B07H51658M/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=9781469649481&qid=1551300115&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
Secondary URL Description: Kindle
URL 3: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-saint-of-our-own-kathleen-sprows-cummings/1129483505?ean=9781469649481#/
URL 3 Description: Nook
URL 4: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/63996
URL 4 Description: Project Muse
URL 5: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469649498_cummings
URL 5 Description: JSTOR
Type: Single author monograph

Prizes

First Place, 2020 Catholic Press Association Book Award in Gender Issues - Inclusion in the Church Category
Date: 4/15/2020
Organization: Catholic Media Association

Second Place, 2020 Catholic Press Association Book Award in History Category
Date: 4/15/2020
Organization: Catholic Media Association

---